It's downtown Portland planning time
Portland Business Journal - April 20, 2007
by Andy Giegerich
And as Portland's planning department embarks on its ambitious new Central Portland Plan, many can't wait to see if it will contain ideas as visionary as those floated in 1988's Central City Plan. All told, the 1988 manifesto recommended 464 actions, compared with just 17 recommended by 1972's Downtown Plan.
Karen Bean, Portland's central city senior project manager, said it's unlikely that the current efforts, set for completion in 2010, will contain as many ideas as the 1988 plan. That version spelled out such bold notions as development within the gritty North Macadam and Northwest Triangle districts.
Today, those areas are called, respectively, the South Waterfront and Pearl districts.
But the Central Portland Plan, which will analyze overall central city conditions and determine how to best update the 1988 efforts, could still shape Portland for decades.
"The 1988 plan is the reason our central city looks and feels the way it does today," said Veronica Valenzuela, Mayor Tom Potter's liaison to the planning bureau. "And these new efforts could dictate what we look like 30 years from now."
Potter's proposed budget, released this week, suggests that the city apply $851,068 toward the Central Portland Plan.
Among other things, the study will explore development regulations, including buildings' allowable heights and constraints on transportation and parking, and the pending expiration of the area's urban renewal districts. Bean said it will also analyze housing, arts and culture.
But much of the plan remains in the development phase. As part of that, the planning department is trading notes with purveyors of other such studies, including the Portland Business Alliance, which recently unveiled its proposals to enhance the central business district, and the Portland Development Commission, which is studying downtown's west-end trends.
Planners from the Portland Department of Transportation will develop their own Central City Transportation Management Plan in tandem with the planning department's proposals.
"With fundamental issues of which parking regulations work and what adjustments we need to make, a lot relates back to the central city process in terms of economic and housing goals," said Steve Iwata, the city's transportation planning supervisor.
Beyond that, Bean's department's work is so preliminary that it's still evaluating exactly which areas to study.
The 1988 plan examined eight districts it considered part of the central city: downtown, Goose Hollow, the area that became Old Town/Chinatown, the Northwest Triangle/Pearl District, Lower Albina, Lloyd Center/Coliseum, Central Eastside and North Macadam/South Waterfront.
The efforts could attract a cadre of urban design enthusiasts. Scores of citizens participated in the 1988 effort; Bean said planners could draw on interest generated by Potter's VisionPDX project, which enticed many urban landscape critics to offer suggestions.
"We've know that there are stakeholders looking for big-picture ideas and specific fixes," Bean said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to take care of both."
The city will increasingly tout the study through the media and other sources in hopes of attracting more citizen involvement.
Many in the urban design community already know that Central Portland Plan work has begun. Tad Savinar, who is advising city and regional leaders on light-rail-area retail planning, said a growing number of Portlanders are interested in how downtown evolves.
"Just as we've seen a shift in cultural and societal behavior with the electronic age, we're seeing the same in terms of how people maneuver through and what services people expect from a city," Savinar said. "This type of planning is coming at a very opportune time."
And while it might seem like there are too many downtown plans on the table, Ethan Seltzer, director of Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning, noted that good cities constantly reconfigure their layouts.
"A lot of planning went into what we're enjoying today, and the rate at which things change is fairly astounding," he said. "It ought to be a constant."
Indeed a planner's job is never done. Not only are there always things to be added, there's a steady flow of emerging services that weren't available, say, 10 years ago, said Seltzer. That said, there could be more coordination among the various planners creating their city visions.
"The onus is on the Planning Commission and the City Council to see the interconnectivity there," he said.
While the Central Portland Plan could take three years, it will arrive more quickly than the 1988 effort, which took four years.
"We're trying to do it in a manageable time frame given the scope of the project," said Bean.
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